


C'est la mort

by dreaming anti-architect (ennta)



Category: The Crow (1994)
Genre: Blood and Gore, F/M, Mentions of Rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-31 18:30:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1034992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ennta/pseuds/dreaming%20anti-architect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Eric fights to avenge Shelly, Shelly wages her own war in the afterlife to save Eric's soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Awake Her Not

 

 

> _Where sunless rivers weep_

> _their waves into the deep,_
> 
> _she sleeps a charmed sleep;_
> 
> _awake her not._
> 
> _“Dream Land,”_

> _Christina Rossetti_

 

Perhaps it was morning when hell stopped burning; Shelly found the flames that had worn her skin down to bone replaced by the sharp cool sting of dew on grass, the fires above turned to piercing diamonds on a black backdrop. She should have been relieved, but a new pain replaced the physical agony; where her heart should have been, seated deep beside her soul, she found only emptiness.

“Where am I?” she choked, slowly rising to her elbows. A nightingale sat on her knee, head cocked to one side, eyes wise and sad.

_We’re moving on_ , a voice whispered in Shelly’s head. _I’m sorry, my dear. He chooses to stay._

That was the emptiness, Shelly realized. That was the ache destroying her from the inside, the ache she would return to the fires to escape.

“Eric,” she choked out. “Where is he?”

_You were given a choice at the river’s edge_ , the nightingale explained. _You chose to stay with him, to cross those waters at his side._ The bird lowered her face. _He could not find peace. He chose to go back. He chose to avenge you rather than follow you into the boat._

“If he’s not here, then I’m not going anywhere,” Shelly protested. “What do you mean, avenge me? It’s over. There’s nothing left for us to do. The dead don’t come back.”

_Sometimes they do._

A vision flooded Shelly’s brain, filling the space between her ears until she thought her consciousness would be torn apart:

_Eric, his face painted in gruesome mimicry of the masks on their apartment walls, holding a knife to a man’s hand and slicing deep, slicing to the bone, slicing each finger away from the hand and then holding them to the man’s face._

_“Where can I find them?” Eric demanded, using the severed fingers to draw figures in the blood pooling on a glass countertop. When the man didn’t answer, Eric shoved him back against the wall. “You answer me, you motherfucking piece of scum, or I will make you eat the hand that feeds you.”_

_“Won’t talk.” The man shook from the shock and drooped from the blood loss. “You think … think this is bad, this is nothing … what Top Dollar’s gonna do ta me …”_

_“Very well.” Eric threw the man aside as though he weighed nothing. “I suppose it’s time for dinner.”_

Shelly recoiled. Eric--her Eric--never let her kill so much as a spider, and his eyes--she had never seen eyes so dark, eyes so cold. Eyes missing something:

Humanity.

_Do you remember your final hours?_ the nightingale asked.

“They burned,” Shelly managed to whisper. “There were men--they broke down the door, they … they shot Eric. Oh God, they shot Eric.” The blood on the hardwood floors, the way his eyes tightened in horror, all drowned out the dark memories of her own body being taken from her control. Her mind shut down around the thought. “I burned,” she repeated.

The nightingale flapped a restless circle above Shelly’s prone body. _You were beaten. You were raped. He saw it all before he died. He was offered the chance to make those who hurt you suffer. That is the choice he made._

The nightingale lighted on the grass. _He is a man consumed by love, and humans are not meant to love so. When they do, they can become demons, and where we are going, there is no place for one with a soul so charred._

“Then send me back!” Shelly exclaimed. “Send me back with him, I’ll help, I’ll--” Feed a man his fingers, Shelly remembered. Find a monster in my eyes. But she would, because surely burning again wouldn’t hurt so badly if she could burn beside him.

Somehow the bird managed to look mournful. _Dear, you would give up heaven? You would give up Elysium for him as he is giving it up for you?_

Shelly stood, her legs shaking. “I’ll fucking give it all up, just take. Me. Back.”

_That is not my realm._ The nightingale came to land on Shelly’s shoulder. _But if you can show me a part of him that is human--if you can show me that this love he manifests as violence is a pure love … Then perhaps I can make a deal with the Crow to bring your Eric to us._

Shelly frowned. “What do you mean?”

_Start from the end_ , the nightingale advised, _and tell me why you lived for this man, and why you would die again for him._

 

 

_~_


	2. Part the First

 

_Palms rise to the universe_

_As we moonshine and molly_

_Feel the warmth_

_We’ll never die_

_We’re like diamonds in the sky_

_“Diamonds,” Rihanna_

 

**I.**

 

“We should write our own vows,” Shelly insisted, looking up from the papers she had scattered around herself on the scuffed hardwood floor of their loft. “You’re a musician, honey, surely you can come up with something pretty.”

Eric ducked out of the kitchenette long enough to shake his head and groan. “You’re going to kill me with this wedding stuff, aren’t you?”

Shelly wrinkled her nose at him. “Oh, c’mon, all you’ve done so far is ask the band to be your best men and decided we should get married in October. On Halloween.” She rolled her eyes at him and unfolded her legs, pushing herself to her feet and crossing the distance between them.

“Babe, I don’t know what to say,” he protested.

She pressed herself up against him and walked her fingers up his chest to his lips. “No,” she corrected. “You’re just scared to say it in public, up in front of everyone.”

His brow furrowed and he pulled her into his arms, resting his cheek on top of her head. “Maybe you’re right,” he whispered, his words muffled by her hair. He held her for a moment longer, swaying back and forth as though dancing to a music she couldn’t hear, then released her. He cupped her freckled cheeks in his big hands. “Okay. We’ll write them ourselves.”

 

**II.**

 

Three days later, Shelly returned home from work to find Eric parading around the apartment, two sheets of paper held over his head.

“Finished my vows!” he announced gleefully, flourishing the papers in the air so Shelly could see the cramped handwriting that covered them.

Shelly made a grab for his arm, but he laughed and ducked away.

“Can’t hear them until the wedding!” he teased, waving them in front of her face and then snatching them away from her reaching fingers.

She rolled her eyes playfully. “I just want to make sure you’re not including anything inappropriate--”

Eric frowned and pretended to stare intently at his papers. “So I should cross out the part about you being an expert with your tongue and fingers, even in the most dubious environments?” He grinned wickedly. “Because the back of the van in the Trash parking lot was a pretty memorable part of our relationship, babe.”

Shelly shrieked in mock horror and threw herself at him again, but he sidestepped her charge and lifted her off the ground. They toppled onto the bed, tangled up in one another, laughing.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her, rolling over on his side and pushing a strand of hair out of her face. “I’m saving the parking lot reminiscences for the reception.” He laughed and rolled away before she could push him off the mattress and onto the floor.

 

**III.**

 

Shelly stared at the blank papers scattered around her on the bed. With a frustrated grunt, she crumpled up one of the papers and threw it at the wall.

“Hey, what’s wrong, babe?” Eric meandered over from the kitchenette and sat down beside her on the comforter.

She shook her head. “It’s just … I made such a big deal about these vows. Now the wedding’s tomorrow, you’ve written yours, and I just … I haven’t written mine,” she confessed.

Eric tried to stifle a laugh and Shelly turned to glare reproachfully at him. “This is important to me, okay?” she snapped, pulling away from him.

Eric’s smile faded. “I’m sorry. I know.” He reached for her hand and watched as she traced her fingers over his knuckles. “But baby, it’s okay. You can just crib some song lyrics or a poem and no one will know.” He met her eyes. “And I won’t care, honey. I won’t care at all.”

Shelly shook her head. “Eric, that’s not the point.” She studied her fingers as they played with his. “The point is for me to tell everyone--me, not some anonymous lyricist or poet--how much I love you. But I don’t know how to say it.”

Eric put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Then you know what you’re going to do?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You’re going to play it by ear,” he said decisively. “We’ll get to the altar and you’ll be in your dress and it’ll be just me and you, forever, and you’re going to tell me why--why you’re standing there, why you chose to make me the luckiest man in the universe.”

Shelly balked. “I can’t--”

“--but you’re going to,” Eric said firmly. “No rehearsing, nothing but what’s in here.” He slid one hand down over her heart. “You wanted me to write my vows, so I did. I want you to improvise.”

Shelly smiled wanly. “Why do I let you talk me into these things?”

Eric winked. “Probably for the cheap wine and sex.” He waggled his eyebrows and stood, reaching for his leather jacket where it hung over the back of a chair.

“In fact,” he said, shrugging the jacket over his broad shoulders, “I think I’ll make a run down to Discount Spirits right now and get you some of that Andre you love.”

“Classy, baby.” Shelly made a face, then smiled. “I’ll run the bath.”

He leaned down to kiss her goodbye. “Don’t forget the candles.”

“I won’t,” she promised. He opened the door and she shook her head at his retreating back. “I love you, you know,” she called behind him.

When he turned around, his grin was so broad it filled his face. “I love you too--my Mrs. Draven.”

Another crumpled piece of paper hit the wall beside his head as he ducked out the doorway, laughing.

 

~


	3. Part the Second

_C’est la vie_

_C’est la mort_

_You and me_

_Forevermore_

_\-- “C’est la mort,” The Civil Wars_

Shelly stared dully at her hands. “That was the end,” she intoned, the emptiness in her throat nearly choking off her words.

_No_ , the nightingale corrected. _It was also the beginning_.

It began to rain, a light mist turning the air around them into a kaleidoscope of damp greenery. Shelly looked up into the sky, idly noting the clouds now covering the stars. She plucked a clump of dirt from the ground and crushed it between her hands until it fell back to the earth in a soft rain of dust and grass.

Another vision-

_One knife and the man is still breathing. One knife, one knife and he’s in pain._

_Eric laughed and plunged another knife into the dark man he had pinned to a stack of crates in an alleyway. Two knives, he’s whimpering. Two knives, two knives and he knows what it is to be penetrated against his will._

_Another knife, but not to kill: No, Eric needed the blood to flow, needed to leave a message in silhouette on the warehouse wall behind them. Needed them to know that he was the angel of death, that tonight they would all die._

_The fourth knife hit a major artery, but Shelly’s pain--oh, Shelly had felt all of it, and so should her attacker. The man begged, he cried, he made promises he could never keep._

_“Shelly begged,” Eric informed him, strangely calm. “Shelly begged you, Tin-Tin, and you kept cutting her. Shelly cried, and you kept piercing her.” He laughed bitterly. “Wasn’t your pleasure much more important than her discomfort?”_

_“Please, man, just end it it, kill me, I don’t care,” Tin-Tin rambled. “I was wrong, man, I shouldn’t’a done it, the bitch wasn’t worth it, just kill me, man!”_

_“Now why,” Eric posited, positioning another knife over his prey’s trembling body, “would I grant a hypocrite his dying wish?”_

Shelly bent to her hands and knees on the grass and dry-heaved. The nightingale paced back and forth in front of her, waiting for the sickness to subside.

_His task is death_ , the nightingale explained. _He is rechristening your union with violence. He avenges it. You must prove its worth with something much less tangible._

A pause. Shelly knew her hair was frizzing into a strawberry blonde halo around her head.

_Do you still love him? After what you’ve seen, can your memories save him?_

Shelly gritted her teeth and met the bird’s eyes. “I never told him my vows,” she hissed. “I never told him.”

The nightingale tilted her head as though in understanding. _What would you have me know next?_

Shelly closed her eyes and tilted her head into the rain. “I didn’t think true love existed. I didn’t think I would find one person I couldn’t live or die without. I did.”

 


End file.
